Enrico Fermi (September 29, 1901 – November 28, 1954) was an Italian physicist most noted for his work on the development of the first nuclear reactor, and for his contributions to the development of quantum theory, nuclear and particle physics, and statistical mechanics.
Enrico Fermi was born in Rome, Italy. His father was Alberto Fermi, a Chief Inspector of the Ministry of Communications, and his mother was Ida de Gattis, an elementary school teacher. As a young boy he attended local grammar school and enjoyed learning physics and mathematics and shared his interests with his older brother, Giulio.In 1918 Fermi enrolled at the prestigious Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, where he was later to receive his undergraduate and doctoral degree. In order to enter the Institute, candidates had to take an entrance exam which included an essay. For his essay on the given theme Characteristics of Sound, 17-year-old Fermi chose to derive and solve the Fourier analysis based partial differential equation for waves on a string.
In 1921, his third year at the university, he published his first scientific works on the Italian magazine Nuovo Cimento: the first was entitled: "On the dynamic of a solid system of electrical charges in transient conditions"; the second: "On the electrostatic of a uniform gravitational field of electromagnetic charges and on the weight of electromagnetic charges".
In 1923, he was awarded a scholarship from Italian Government and spent some month with Professor Max Born in Gottingen. With a Rockefeller Fellowship, in 1924, he move to Leyden to work with P. Ehrenfest, later return to Italy for the post of lecturer in mathematical Physics and mechanics at the University of Florence.
When he was only 24 years old, Fermi took a professorship at the University of Rome (first in atomic physics in Italy) which he won in a competition held by Professor Orso Mario Corbino, director of the Institute of Physics.
In 1938, Fermi won the Nobel Prize in Physics at the age of 37 for his work on nuclear processes.
After Fermi received the Nobel Prize in Stockholm, he, his wife Laura, and their children immigrated to New York and began working with Columbia University.
After became American citizen and at the end of the war Fermi then went to the University of Chicago and began studies that led to the construction of the first nuclear pile Chicago Pile-1.
Fermi was widely regarded as the only physicist of the twentieth century who excelled both theoretically and experimentally.
He died of cancer at the University of Chicago on November 28, 1954. Fermi is remembered as the "father of the atomic bomb."
Enrico Fermi
